So opines Ridge’s Paul Draper in the first half of Wine From Here, a documentary about (and at points a bit of a commercial for) the budding natural winemaking movement in California (I got a sneak peak by invitation from one of the filmmakers, Martin Carel of Wino Brothers Inc.). The trailer is embedded below for your viewing pleasure.

Draper’s comment above is in reference to (what I think is) the strongest selling point behind natural winemaking: consumers ought to know what they are getting when they buy a product, and in the case of wine sometimes they are getting a lot more than just fermented grape juice, primarily in the form of various additives (for more on that topic, and for a rough definition of natural winemaking itself, see my review of Alice Feiring’s new book – she makes several appearances in the film, by the way). And as we know well, consumer sentiment is king, and will play a large part in whether or not the natural winemaking movement gains any serious traction in the wine biz and becomes the vinous equivalent of the organic / slow food phenomena.

Based on the film (which is well-made, and is highly recommended watching for wine geeks), the natural winemaking movement sorely needs to emphasize its strong points, because it’s still touting a few tenets that hold less water than well-drained gravelly vineyard soils…

The leakiest of those tenets? The notion that natural winemaking is the most accurate lightening rod for transmitting a sense of place. Wine From Here begins its dénouement with a blind tasting of natural CA wines with experts and CA natural winemakers. It’s one of the dramatic low points of the film, which is a shame because the results of the tasting are themselves fairly dramatic; as summarized by the film’s narrator:

“…Only sometimes could they correctly identify the grapes or some detail of the winemaking methods; and not one could identify the specific terroir in California.”

Oh, blind tasting, you universally cool, cruel arbiter and equalizer!

While the above result will come as no surprise to anyone who has ever taken part in a blind tasting of wines, it undercuts the message delivered by several of the interviewees in the film that natural winemaking is a more reliable delivery service than UPS when it comes to bringing you a sense of place in a wine.

Wine From Here does a pretty good job of balancing the various sides of natural winemaking story in CA, including not shying away from the thorny topic of how environmental friendliness (another claim widely espoused by organic grape growers and natural winemakers) should be measured. Jared Brandt, winemaker at A Donkey and Goat, puts it best in his interview when he recalls a conversation with a former French employer, who noted that after converting to Biodynamics “his diesel usage went up ten times… is using ten times as much diesel worse on the environment than using RoundUp? I don’t think it’s as clear-cut as people think it is.”

Far more interesting to me, and I think a tactic ultimately more likely for success, are the comparisons made in the film between natural winemaking and natural foods. Long-standing godfather of CA natural wine Tony Coturri talks up this food angle, as does Alice Feiring, and it’s a strong one. If you demand that your food be processed as little as possible, then as a consumer don’t you have the right to demand the same thing from your wines?

“Our goal is to do nothing [to the wine]; so if we have to do anything, we want to do as little as possible.”

The corollary of course being that much of the wine you’re drinking is having something done to it, and in many cases it’s having a sh*tload of stuff done to it, none of which you probably know anything about and certainly some of which you’d rather go without putting in your mouth if you did know it was in there.

Wine From Here isn’t perfect, but if you’re a fine wine geek then it sure as hell ought to get you thinking about how and why wine production, in its pursuit of “perfection,” often turns more into craft and recipe-following than it does into genuine artistic expression.

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Comments

Great post as always, Joe! I will definitely be interested in the movie when it comes out and appreciate you sharing.

But, do you know what is even more interesting to me? The fact that you were able to embed the video clip into the blog update email that I received from you. That was so cool!! Please do share with me someday how you were able to pull off this miraculous accomplishment! Cheers, Bryan

Thanks, Betty! My take on blind tastings is this: do it to figure out what *you* prefer to drink. I actually think blind tasting can screw up critical reviews because when in doubt (and you WILL be in doubt in a blind tasting! :) you will (or at least I think I do this) default to your preferences and then equate those to the quality of the wine. And I believe strongly that a wine can and should stand on its own merits *despite* my personal preferences. I.e., I would always be scoring Rieslings higher I fear if I only ever tasted wines blind for review. BUT… for my personal drinking? LOVE blind tasting for that, because it quickly lets you figure out if you like a $10 bargain bin wine better than a $75 wine, and that is great news for you as a consumer. Cheers!

Andy

Monday, 19 September, 2011 at 18:09

Non-interventionalism" is such nonsense. All of winemaking is an intervention — it depends on whether you think the intervention is "good" or "bad". And while I am a big fan of the "slow food" movement, I do not think the analogy to natural wine is fair. Really, how is racking, egg white or gelatin fining, flitering or even using cultured yeasts (which are just naturally occuring yeasts… uninoculated fermentations are typically the neighbors cultured yeasts blown on the wind to your winery anyways…) going to adversly effect the "health" of the beverage (unlike say feeding cows corn or fast food)? As I see it, the goal of "natural wine" is to harvest grapes with lower Brix and higher TA, which reduces the risk of VA, stuck fermentations, high ETOH, RS etc and thus reduces the need to "intervene" for these issues. And one can argue that wines so produced are truer to the varietal and site. The downside — astringency and other underripe characteristics and spoilage yeasts (esp when sulfites are not used). Is the "natural style" better than the "intervened" style…well only your palate can decide

Good points, Andy. My slow food comparison was really around wines that have been acidified, watered down and had additives, well, added. I am of the strong opinion that wines which the natural winemaking folks would label as manipulated can be great wines. As you say, your personal palate is the ultimate judge. Cheers!

Andy

Tuesday, 20 September, 2011 at 12:13

I am not certain that aciding tartaric acid and water would constitute a potentially dangerous manipulation. It is certainly a stylistic choice but again its not anywhere close to McDonalds versus Chez Pannise (sp?). As one proceeds down the intervention road, maybe some the "arms long list" of additives noted in the trailer rise to the level of Red Dye #6 but most of what is typically used in CA winemaking to compensate for riper grapes is simply not like this. Both sides use interventions to achieve a certain style of wine — neither is good or bad. I prefer the middle ground

Hi Andy – I did not mean to say that those additives were dangerous, just that they were additions and did not arise naturally from the process. You are right that those are not the same as Hydrogenated oils for example. And I always appreciate the centrist viewpoint, since I tend to walk that road most times myself. Cheers!

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